Maybe you saw this the other day. In a recent survey, four out of ten soldiers in Iraq surveyed said they would engage in torture if it would save the life of a fellow soldier. Two-thirds said they would not report a fellow soldier for mistreating civilians, and ten percent said that they had, in fact, mistreated civilians.

As I started to read the article, Julia Ward Howe's words echoed in my mind.

"Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs"

That is what the military does.

This Sunday is the day we celebrate Mother's Day. Mother's Day was not some holiday created by a card company to sell more cards. It did not originate as a joyous celebration of our mothers, but out of the sorrows mothers feel when their sons and husbands go to war. In 1870, Julia Ward Howe proposed the first Mother's Day as a day of peace to protest the carnage of the Civil War. Here is her proclamation.

Mother's Day Proclamation
Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, disarm! The Sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
- Julia Ward Howe, 1870

Decades later in 1907, just one hundred years ago, the first Mother's Day observance was held at a church service honoring the memory of Anna Reese Jarvis in Grafton, West Virginia. Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, organized women during the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions and to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors. As I look around today, I see all of their efforts to to get us to set aside our differences and the insturments of war as unraveling. We now describe the treaties and conventions that are designed to prevent war 'quaint' artifacts of time. We now argue that the treaties and conventions, designed to make the waging of war a rare occurrence, no longer apply.

Maybe you are one of those people who thinks Christmas is about Santa Clause and Easter is about the Easter Bunny, or maybe you see a much deeper meaning behind the celebration. This year, I hope you consider the meaning behind Mother's Day, and see the need for a real Mother's Day celebration.

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